Hydraulic Level Five (1) (3 page)

“So, dear Danita, why dost thou need my sage opinion?” I asked around a mouthful of turkey and Swiss.

She smiled sadly, and I realized I’d stolen a quip from Samuel. “It’s the ceremony program.” She pulled out a sheet of lavender cardstock and tapped her nails over it, not passing it to me, thinking.

“Um, do you want me to look at that?”

“I spoke with my brother today.” A fly ball from left field clobbered me in the noggin. “Kaye, you tend to get defensive, so can you hear me out?”

I nodded, wary.

“Samuel’s coming back to Lyons for my wedding.”

“Yes, he’s one of the groomsmen.”

“You’ll probably be around him more than you’re used to.”

I chuckled mirthlessly. “Dani, I’ve only seen him four times since he left. That’s an understatement.”

“Can you two get along in public?”

“If not, Sofia will take us out back and swat our rears.” She didn’t laugh. “Seriously, Danita, no weirdness. Water under the bridge. I think we can be civil to each other.”

“I just want to make sure. I heard what happened at Thanksgiving two years ago. And you’re my maid of honor…”

I opened my palms. “I wasn’t prepared to see him, then. Look, can I just preview the program?”

She slid it across the table. Music selections, scriptures…the editor in me checked all of the names for correct spelling. Wait.

“Why is my last name just a question mark?”

Danita fiddled with her napkin. “I didn’t know what to print.”

“Just ask, Dani.”

“Okay. I wasn’t sure…your name.”

Comprehension dawned.
Oh, Danita
. I’d never changed my name back to Trilby after…well, after. It’d been such a pain to switch in the first place that I didn’t want the additional heartache on top of the other crap. As years passed and my business took off, I’d never bothered with it. I gave Danita a weak smile, guilty that she had to deal with my baggage.

“It’s still Kaye Cabral. You know that.”

Her eyes were pinned to her half-eaten salad, and it occurred to me that maybe my retention of the Cabral name might be upsetting at the wedding. Great aunts, old-school relatives from Mexico. Bitter ex-husband?

“Do you really think it bothers Samuel?” My heart sank.

“I really don’t know how Sam feels about it. I’m more worried about you, frankly.”

“Me?” Ah. “So you’re thinking I’m not over him, when he’s over me.”

“Yes.” Leave it to Dani to cut straight to the heart of a matter. “Things have changed somewhat. You see, he’s bringing Caroline.”

“His agent? I figured she’d come along because of the book tour.”

“No, Kaye. I mean they’re seeing each other. Romantically. He’s bringing her to the wedding as his date.”

I felt as if the wind was knocked straight from my chest. Sure, Samuel had his casual girlfriends—actresses, singers, other writers—splashed across gossip mags and entertainment shows. He was a shining novelist, Broadway’s wonder-boy playwright, not to mention hair-raisingly handsome. If he kept a woman around long enough, they’d discover he played a mean Spanish guitar.

But Caroline Ortega…That one really stung. I knew Samuel would never risk that precious writer/agent-editor-publicist-whatever-she-was relationship unless he was serious about her. At least, the Samuel
I’d
known never would.

I fought to regain my composure. “I thought he was seeing Indigo Kingsley—the chick cast as Neelie in
Water Sirens
? She took him to the Oscars just a couple of months ago.”

“I don’t think it was as official as the mags made it out to be.” Danita’s brown eyes dug through my nonchalance.

“Well, thank goodness I have a couple of months to prep. Gotta look hot to show up the new girlfriend.” My laugh was weirdly high.

“Actually, you don’t have two months. He’ll be in town early for his book tour.”

“How early?”

“He flies in two weeks from tomorrow.” I dropped my sandwich. “He said he’d be at bookstores in Boulder, Colorado Springs, then Denver before taking a break to spend time with the family.”

Why hadn’t I heard anything yet? Caroline always used TrilbyJones to plan local signings for Samuel’s
Water Sirens
series, given his hometown hero status. I delegated the projects to Molly, preferring to stay out of his life completely. We’d never get them arranged…unless…

Oh no. Freaking
hell
no. Caroline wasn’t using our firm, and I could only guess why.

“Bastard!”

Dani reached across the table and awkwardly patted my hand. I jerked it away and busied myself with paying my bill.

“Print whatever name you like in the program, Danita. I don’t care. See you this weekend.” When we parted, I wearily slipped from the café and headed upstairs to my apartment, calling it an early day.

Caroline. Brilliant, refined Caroline Ortega. A lovely woman he could bring home to
sus padres
…someone who shared his heritage and not just a love for bluegrass. Why didn’t I see her coming? Years later, stuff like this still surfaced and, like hidden tree roots, knocked me flat.

Maybe I needed to unearth those roots and deal with them, starting with my last name.

Since he’d left me almost seven years ago to “find himself” at New York University, I’d only seen Samuel four times.

The first was a brief, devastating visit to New York City, just weeks after he’d moved. I was still in denial that he’d actually left me forever. I saw him for a total of two minutes. I came home, filed for divorce, and no one knew about that trip except for his parents.

The second was to negotiate our divorce settlement. We’d stared at each other across the gulf of a conference table in Jaime Guzman’s law firm. Samuel was haggard—unshaven, clammy skin, glazed, blood-shot eyes. I didn’t look much better. Shell-shocked. There wasn’t much to negotiate; we’d only been married for nineteen months. Aside from a trust from Samuel’s birth parents, we didn’t have any assets. Little did I know, he already had a book deal in the works that would eventually make an obscene amount of money. Every four-zero alimony check he insisted on mailing went directly into a savings account and remained untouched.

The third time I saw Samuel was several years later, again at Jaime Guzman’s law firm, to renegotiate that cursed alimony. He wanted to fly all the way to Lyons to “talk it out,” though a conference call would have been logical. I argued I wouldn’t touch a cent of his fortune, and he countered that I could do whatever I wanted—it didn’t concern him anymore. I folded, my heart too heavy to fight.

The fourth and final time I saw Samuel was the day before Thanksgiving, two years ago. Sofia had called, asking me to swing by the house for her famous mango pie. She assured me that Samuel wouldn’t arrive until later. Silly me, I should have known she was up to something by her hopeful, agitated tone. But I was completely and utterly caught off-guard when the door swung open to reveal none other than my ex, as striking as ever.

He had filled out a bit, no longer a skinny kid but a full-fledged man. Over his shoulder, I saw the old Gibson guitars out and tuned. A part of me ached for that close camaraderie we’d shared, before hormones and kissing and sex messed everything up. I felt the warmth of his olive skin beneath his soft sweater and jeans when he hugged me, breathed my name. For a moment, I was home—that perfect place everyone hunts for in music, and comfort food, and scents.

Then, that perfect place slapped me with a goodbye letter and I remembered how he’d thrown this—me—away, with the callousness of a con artist. Disgusted, my arms fell to my side.

I despised him. I despised how his blue eyes were full of innocence and childlike hope but not a fleck of contrition. How he made me feel like a mud-slopped doormat because I yearned to pick up that guitar anyway. My fingernails itched to tear through the tender skin of his neck.

My parting words were something along the lines of, “You abandoned me like a spoiled little boy!” I viciously told him, “I never wanted the whole damned marriage in the first place.”

He accused me of marrying him for his family and bitterly asked, “Are you glad you have them now that I’m gone?” Suffice it to say, Sofia’s staged intervention was a bust.

After that surreal, disastrous Thanksgiving, he emailed me three times. Once to apologize for the fight, which I accepted and returned likewise. Next, asking if I wanted to see The Twiggies with him in Denver. I didn’t reply. He tried again. And again. And again. Again, I didn’t answer.

Then he stopped trying.

Chapter 3: Hung Up

When a craft is snagged, but not wrapped
or flipped by a river obstacle.

Untitled
Draft 2.3
© Samuel Caulfield Cabral
Festivarians and Firecracker

S
TORMING
T
HE
S
TAGE
is the Tripping Marys, a local band playing the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival at Planet Bluegrass. Greasy hair, ripped jeans and flannel, they work the crowd until everyone is a die-hard four-leaf-clover.

A loud “fuck” flies from the mouth of a groupie and Caulfield’s adoptive parents cover his and Maria’s ears. Next to them, nine-year-old Aspen and her dad, in matching Bob Marley T-shirts, twirl each other with sticky hands, blissfully unaware of his parents’ disapproval.

“Maybe we should see the dance troupe again,” Caulfield’s father suggests.

He shrugs. “They were okay.” He says the same thing about the fiddler, the man playing spoons, the music petting zoo, the face painting. He wouldn’t mind seeing the jugglers again, only because Aspen is enthralled with their pin-tumbling hands. He likes to watch her laugh more than he likes to see snow-capped peaks pierce the sky. When she laughs, her entire body laughs.

His aunt tenderly sweeps a hand through his hair, but his body twists from her touch. She is not his “Mamá.” That title is for one person alone—a queenly redhead who wears pink and speeds along the shoreline of Boston in a convertible.

Aspen tugs his shirt sleeve, peering up with eager eyes. “Let’s get closer. I wanna see the guitars.” They push their way past hundreds of long skirts and wooden beads, rumpled cotton and hemp. He still smells the cotton candy she ate, above Festivarian sweat and pot and pine-sap air. His father follows close behind. They duck under arms and jostle their way to the very edge of the stage.

The band switches their electric guitars for acoustics, easing into a ballad. The shoving calms and the crowd settles onto the ground.

“Wow,” Aspen breathes, eyes glued to the guitarist’s fingers as they skim over strings. Her good ear turns to the stage. “Caulfield, I want to learn how to do that.” She clutches the boy’s hand. He doesn’t twist away.

“I do too, Firecracker.”

She wrinkles her nose. “Why’d you call me that?”

“I dunno. You’re kind of exciting and explosive, and you surprise me a lot.”

“Oh…I guess that’s okay.”

The ballad is a sad, fervent melody. Simple chords snake through their ears and bind the children together as they sway, sucked in, bewitched. It drowns out the mad cacophony of tribal drums. Gone are the sculpted red devils, cloggers busting moves, rainbow bumper-stickers, the mountains themselves. When the music plays, all else churns in a muted gray.

It’s in this one-song sub-universe that Caulfield and Aspen become Festivarians. Every August, like pilgrims, they return to Planet Bluegrass to wade through crowds and let the music swallow them.

Over and over, until life drives them thousands of miles, thousands of days, apart.